The Unserious State of the Union
President Trump’s state of the Union speech to Congress was adequate as to both substance and delivery. It included some important initiatives, such as a border barrier, ending pointless wars in Syria and Afghanistan, rebuilding American manufacturing and improving relations with North Korea. As the president might say, “All good”.
Of more interest, and concern, were the atmospherics within and surrounding his speech. Both reflected a soft, sentimental, womanized culture of “feelings” that is a classic sign of decadence. Indeed, both the president and his audience wallowed in sentiment to the point where the event simply lacked seriousness.
On the president’s part, his “celebration” of women entering the workforce and Congress was perfectly politically correct. Unfortunately, he was elected in no small part because as a candidate he defied political correctness. By bowing to it before Congress and the country he suggested he is now caving to the Establishment. No doubt his remarks pleased feminists, but feminists will never vote for Donald Trump.
Had the president instead decided to be serious, he would have pointed out that when a nation’s women leave their proper sphere and try to take over the roles of men, that nation is on the downhill slide. The problem is not merely that women firemen, women soldiers, and women pilots cannot do the men’s jobs they have assumed, at least when the going gets rough. Far deadlier to the nation’s future is the fact that when women abandon their highly important traditional roles of rearing children, making good homes, and serving their communities in a wide variety of volunteer roles, those jobs go undone. Men do not fill up the resulting vacuums.
Instead of fawning over the feminists, the president might have pointed out that most women who work do so because they have to, not because they want to. They would rather be at home with their husbands and children. For them to do that, their husbands need the good-paying jobs manufacturing creates. That would tie helping the non- and anti-feminist women who are part of Trump’s base to his high tariff policies. Just as America industrialized under tariff protection, so it will need tariff protection to rebuild its industry.
The culture of sentiment overflowed the president’s speech in another way, namely his repeated turning to “human interest” stories and the people behind them who stood to take their bows. I’m sure they were all worthy of their applause. But the whole business of dragging them into what should be a serious review of, well, the state of the Union, was trivializing. Can Americans no longer hear and consider serious matters? Is everything to be reduced to third-grade “show and tell”? The answers, from Mr. Trump’s speech, seem to be “no” and “yes”.
The worrisome atmospherics were not restricted to President Trump. Nancy’s Pelosi’s leers, grimaces, and paper shuffling were unsuited to what should be a high and serious event, a formal review of the state of our Union. Worse were the camera pans of the audience, High Panjamdruns all, who collectively suggested a cross between bingo night at St. John Bosco and the Brezhnev Politburo. The silly women in white--scarlet would have been a more appropriate color--acted as if they had been enjoying the champagne from an early hour. Had the whole event been presented as a satire to itself, would it have been any different?
The harsh reality is that the state of the Union is not good. The bonds that hold us in union are weakening. As the Establishment takes ever more extreme actions to force cultural Marxism down everyone’s throat--just look at the farce in Virginia, where a bit of shoe polish from 35 years ago is supposed to drive a governor from office--the people who live in the Heartland are saying, “Why should we knuckle down to this nonsense? If that’s all the elite can do, let’s let them row their own boat while we sail ours.”
If the Union is to endure, its people will have to recover an ability to be serious. Serious problems demand masculine facts and reason, not feminine feelings. Women have a vital role in our society, but pretending they are men is not one of them. A Congress full of women will not be able to make decisions necessary to reverse our decay, restore a common purpose, and set us on a new collective course. Designing, building, and sailing a ship of state is a job for a team of men, not a bridal shower.
Interested in what Fourth Generation war in America might look like? Read Thomas Hobbes’ new future history, Victoria.